Search engine optimization (SEO) involves techniques to improve a website's ranking in organic search results. Search engines index websites to include them in their searchable databases. They use algorithms to determine the most relevant results for a query based on on-page elements like content and tags, and off-page elements like backlinks. Rank, authority from backlinks, and relevance to the query keyword are key factors search engines consider when deciding search result placement.

1. SECTION 1:
INTRODUCTION TO SEO
 What is SEO?
 Search engine optimization (SEO) refers to techniques that help
your website rank higher in organic (or “natural”) search results,
thus making your website more visible to people who are looking
for your product or service via search engines.
 SEO is part of the broader topic of Search Engine Marketing
(SEM), a term used to describe all marketing strategies for
search. SEM entails both organic and paid search. With paid
search, you can pay to list your website on a search engine so
that your website shows up when someone types in a specific
keyword or phrase. Organic and paid listings both appear on the
search engine, but they are displayed in different locations on the
page.
 SEO

2. SECTION 1:
INTRODUCTION TO SEO
 What about paid search? Yes, you can pay to have
your website listed on the search engines. However,
running paid search campaigns can be quite costly if
you don‟t know what you‟re doing.
 Because the sole purpose of a search engine is to
provide you with relevant and useful information, it is
in everyone‟s best interest (for the search engine,
the searcher, and you) to ensure that your website is
listed in the organic search listings. In fact, it is
probably best to stay away from paid search all
together until you feel you have a firm grasp on SEO
and what it takes to rank organically.

3. HOW SEARCH ENGINES WORKS?
 Search engines have one objective – to provide you with the most
relevant results possible in relation to your search query. If the
search engine is successful in providing you with information that
meets your needs, then you are a happy searcher. And happy
searchers are more likely to come back to the same search
engine time and time again because they are getting the results
they need.
 In order for a search engine to be able to display results when a
user types in a query, they need to have an archive of available
information to choose from. Every search engine has proprietary
methods for gathering website content. Regardless of the specific
tactics or methods used, this process is called indexing. Search
engines actually attempt to scan the entire online universe and
index all the information so they can show it to you when you
enter a search query.

4. HOW SEARCH ENGINES WORKS?
 How do they do it? Every search engine has
what are referred to as bots, or crawlers, that
constantly scan the web, indexing websites
for content and following links on each
webpage to other webpages. If your website
has not been indexed, it is impossible for
your website to appear in the search results.

5. HOW SEARCH ENGINES WORKS?

6. HOW SEARCH ENGINES WORKS?
 So, big search engines like Google, Bing,
and Yahoo are constantly indexing hundreds
of millions, if not billions, of webpages. How
do they know what to show on the SERP
when you enter a search query? The search
engines consider two main areas when
determining what your website is about and
how to give priority to it.

7. HOW SEARCH ENGINES WORKS?
 1. Content on your website: When indexing pages, the search engine
bots scan each page of your website, looking for clues about what topics
your website covers and scanning your website‟s back-end code for
certain tags, descriptions, and instructions.
 2. Who’s linking to you: As the search engine bots scan webpages for
indexing, they also look for links from other websites. The more inbound
links a website has, the more influence or authority it has. Essentially,
every inbound link counts as a vote for that website‟s content. Also,
each inbound link holds different weight. For instance, a link from a
highly authoritative website like The New York Times (nytimes.com) will
give a website a bigger boost than a link from a small blog site. This
boost is sometimes referred to as link juice.

8. HOW SEARCH ENGINES WORKS?
 When a search query is entered, the search engine
looks in its index for the most relevant information
and displays the results on the SERP. The results are
then listed in order of most relevant and authoritative.
 If you conduct the same search on different search
engines, chances are you will see different results on
the SERP. This is because each search engine uses
a proprietary algorithm that considers multiple factors
in order to determine what results to show in the
SERP when a search query is entered.

9. GOOGLE.COM

10. YAHOO.COM

11. HOW SEARCH ENGINES WORKS?
 A few factors that a search engine algorithm may
consider when deciding what information to show in
the SERP include:
 Geographic location of the searcher
 Historical performance of a listing (clicks, bounce
rates, etc.)
 Link quality (reciprocal vs. one-way)
 Webpage content (keywords, tags, pictures)
 Back end code or HTML of webpage
 Link type (social media sharing, link from media
outlet, blog, etc.)

12. HOW SEARCH ENGINES WORKS?
 Google dominates the search engine market.
Google became the leader by the way
search engines work and giving searchers
better results with their advanced algorithm.
With 64% market share, according to
Compete, Inc., Google is still viewed as the
primary innovator and master in the space.

13. WHAT IT TAKES TO RANK
 It is not difficult to get your website to index and even rank on the
search engines. However, getting your website to rank for specific
keywords can be tricky. There are essentially 3 elements that a
search engine considers when determining where to list a website
on the SERP: rank, authority, and relevance.
 Rank
 Rank is the position that your website physically falls in on the
SERP when a specific search query is entered. If you are the first
website in the organic section of the SERP (don‟t be confused by
the paid ads at the very top), then your rank is 1. If your website
is in the second position, your rank is 2, and so on. As discussed
previously in How Search Engines Work, your rank is an indicator
of how relevant and authoritative your website is in the eyes of
the search engine, as it relates to the search query entered.

14. RANK
#1
#2
#3

15. RANK
 Authority
 As previously discussed in the How Search
Engines Work section, search engines
determine how authoritative and credible a
website‟s content is by calculating how many
inbound links (links from other websites) it has.
However, the number of inbound links does not
necessarily correlate with higher rankings. The
search engines also look at how authoritative
the websites that link to you are, what anchor
text is used to link to your website, and other
factors such as the age of your domain.

16. RANK
 Relevance
 Relevance is a one of the most critical factors of
SEO. The search engines are not only looking to see
that you are using certain keywords, but they are also
looking for clues to determine how relevant your
content is to a specific search query. Besides actual
text on your webpages, the search engines will
review your website‟s structure, use of keywords in
your URLs, page formatting (such as bolded text),
and what keywords are in the headline of the
webpage versus those in the body text.